Spoiler alert: it was pretty dark…

At around 7.15pm last night, Dubai Mall was plunged into darkness when a power outage spread across the shopping centre.

The blackout lasted approximately two hours, in which time shoppers had to resort to using the lights on their mobile phones to navigate around the mall.

Many visitors took to social media posting photos and videos of the incident using the hashtags #dubaimallblackout and #dubaimallpowercut.

Even the outside of the mall suffered from the blackout, but you can see clearly in the background that the Burj Khalifa was unaffected.

People were also worried about the state of the marine life in the Dubai Aquarium. When contacted a spokesperson of Dubai Aquarium & Underwater Zoo told What’s On that the incident did not impact the operations of the aquarium, and all animals are safe.

While the whole incident caused a bit of a stir on social media, the truth behind the blackout was pretty cut and dry and things were back up and running in a couple of hours.

Gulf Business reported that the Dubai Water and Electricity Authority later confirmed that the outage arose due to “the transfer of high-voltage cables from the Dubai Mall substation”.

“DEWA and Emaar [which owns and operates Dubai Mall] had previously agreed to transfer the cables. During the transfer, the outage occurred, because one line went out of service.

“DEWA’s technicians have fully restored the power to normal service. The supply of electricity and water to the rest of the area was not affected,” it added.